I made the decision when i stated doing this that I was not going to deal with the refurb aspect of things. I didn't want to have to learn about fixing and dealing with the technical aspects of the repair work, nor did i want to go through the hassle of storing (for who knows how long) items until i could find a buyer... and then selling and having to deal with customers, payments, support, etc. I decided I would deal with strictly scrapping and keep my operation streamlined for quick turnaround so I could keep my basement clean.

That is a question that every one should ask themselves and plan their business model accordingly. For me, it was not worth the hassle, time and space investment to go that route... so I focus on scrapping.

I am not saying it isn't possible to make money fixing things up though. I know a few guys that refurb computers and equipment and make good money. But they have the technical know how. And they are not focused on scrapping either :P

I will go through the extensive testing and everything for SCSI and SAS drives which never really loose their premium price tag. As well as original TRUE IDE. But ATA and SATA aren’t worth the headache.Keep in mind it’s not just a simple format and sell if you want real money.You need to format, encrypt, reformat. To guarantee the data can’t be recovered. Then surface scanning and testing. Board and actuator testing. Then photos, posting, waiting for a buyer.After all that a bad tumble for it’s box on the way to the buyer and they get a dead drive regardless.

Sas drives regularly pass $100 no mater the size. SCSI some real small and real large ones will commonly get up there too. Ide drives are single and double digit megabyte drives. They’re extremely rare and working can get into the thousands of dollar range. But don’t confuse them with original ATA spec drives! At the same sizes worth under $10. But when you can go and pick up a 5tb brand new sata for $100 nobody is really fighting for them used.

I don’t really deal with flash at all. Without hardware level encryption that is only in enterprise drives, you can’t guarantee the data is totally secured and unrecoverable. And even there only if the encryption key is stored in an encrypted eeprom on the controller than can be rewritten.

_________________-- my grades are my own and do not represent an offer from boardsort, nor are they guaranteed. Please keep that in mind.

I will go through the extensive testing and everything for SCSI and SAS drives which never really loose their premium price tag. As phenq reviews https://phenq-avis.com/en/ found here well as original TRUE IDE. But ATA and SATA aren’t worth the headache.Keep in mind it’s not just a simple format and sell if you want real money.You need to format, encrypt, reformat. To guarantee the data can’t be recovered.

Oh man! Thank you SO much. I occasionally try to repair and sell hard disks but I just used to format it and sell it. Never went through format, encrypt, reformat route. Thank you so much for the tip. :)

Last edited by AnthonyClements on Thu Apr 04, 2019 4:10 pm, edited 6 times in total.

There are dozens of devices on amazon for external total encryption wipes that start around $50 used. Most are in the $150-$300 range new.

However the easiest and least expensive route is an internal to external cable “dongle” for $10-$25. I use sabrent and Vantec devices myself to run my primary drives via USB hub on a Mac. 2.5” and SSD drives will self power off usb3. But Most of these devices come with a power adapter too for USB2.

There’s dozens of free drive encryption program on Git and Sourceforge. My go to though is BestCrypt or BCWipe. Commercial. BC uses bizarre enough wipe patterns to make recovery impossible. Period. As I’ve alluded to before; I’ll state here. Even the drive wiping format software from Microsoft on MSDN and from Apple: I can recover 90% of your data in under 30 minutes on a 2TB drive. With BC there is zero chance of recovery. I’ve used BCWipe since it was first released as a replacement for Dead Vault, a DOS program.

You don’t really need to repartition after that either, these days: Windows 8 and 10, server, and MacOS 10.6+, and Linux K 3.x+ all will immediately recognise an unpartitioned raw drive on connection. Saving the buyer time in reformatting to a different partition table.

I don’t work for Jetico but if you read through my various posts there’s a tiny selection of software and hardware I’ll stand behind because they’ve never let me down. The BC programs are among them.

Sabrent is one of the best rebrandings for I/O gear. You pay more than the generic base but it comes with 5 generations of driver support and a much longer warranty. On the other end is the VanTec NexStar line. They’re more finicky and for newer systems in general. These are cases, docks, and hot swap bays that are truly unsurpassed in manufacturing. In nearly 20 years neither company’s products have failed me. I still have a working IDE/SCSI/ATA dock from VanTec that works. it’s from the early 90s and predates the NexStar branding. VanTec also sells replacement parts and even raw components to technicians as well. Showing they respect technicians more than most who will just sell you a whole new unit.

_________________-- my grades are my own and do not represent an offer from boardsort, nor are they guaranteed. Please keep that in mind.

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